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Toys : Shadows Over Camelot |
- Boring!I have to say, I was surprised at just how boring this game was. Normally I like games from this publisher (Days of Wonder) as nice, family-friendly games with a touch of good strategy. But Shadows over Camelot not only took a long time to play and was complicated to learn, it also offered me little in terms of entertainment. Most of your choices are pretty obvious - if you're on the Grail quest, you just draw a random event card, and then play a grail card if you've got one, then wait a few minutes for your next turn and do it all over again. The traitor really can't do that much to overtly sabotage the good guys, so there just isn't enough to the game to make it worthwile, especially in light of how complex it is.
Reiner Knizia and Fantasy Flight Games have made a very similar game, based on the Lord of the Rings book, called the Lord of the Rings Board Game, which Amazon also carries (be careful, Fantasy Flight Games also makes a game called War of the Ring, which is totally different and unrelated, but also pretty good). Anyway, the Lord of the Rings game is far superior to Shadows over Camelot in almost every way - more fun, more action, more evocative of the books, more interesting decisions, more sense of the players being able to control their own destinies, and more interesting discussions as the players plan out options and contingencies and discuss the trade-offs. Honestly, the two games are extremely similar and I can't think of any way in which I would recommend Shadows over Camelot over Lord of the Rings.
Rating:
- Fun for AdultsShadows Over Camelot is a great game, although pretty complex. It takes a couple of times of playing to get used to all the details. It is a good game for adults to play and not that great for kids...
Rating:
- Too Easy!This is a rebuttal of the review entitled Tooo Hard. I have played this game several times, and won more often than not, even with a traitor, if you choose your quests correctly and work together on them (ie do the grail first and ignore the dragon) then you stand a very good chance of winning and the traitor will have to get pretty lucky to stop you. I think that the difficulty scales reasonable well with the number of players (each player 'advances evil' each turn) but with more people you can concentrate your efforts better and the game becomes easier. However, if you split up and all attack separate quests you are sure to fail.
Rating:
- Complicated but funThis game has a lot of moving pieces and is rather complicated to learn. It has different "quests" that the knights of the round table can complete for points. At the same time, the evil doers are competing against the knights to get points as well. What makes this game interesting is that each player has to complete a "good" action and an "evil" action at the same time. That is to prevent the team from easily guessing who the traitor is. The pictures are fun, the game board complicated, but there is lots of opportunity for strategy. The game cards have interesting actions on them. Takes lots of time to play and needs dedicated players but fun in general.
Rating:
- TOOOOOOO HARDSome people will love the fact that this game is incredibly hard. Not complex mind you; hard. It seems next to impossible to beat the evil forces in this game. It is alot of fun trying to figure out how you can achieve this, but good luck ever achieving it. Perhaps this is the draw of the game, and if you ever beat it, you'll never want to do it again. I don't know because we have never come close and now my gaming group never wants to play again. All because it is so tough. This is without even playing with the traitor. We tried that as well and we got completely smoked.
Bottom Line: Is it fun? Definately, but be ready for a puzzle as to how to ever beat this game.
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